Taint of Evil by Neil McIntosh

Author:Neil McIntosh [McIntosh, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Warhammer
Published: 2011-07-20T07:00:00+00:00

Anaise sat patiently by Bea’s side, waiting for the girl’s sobs to subside. Bea cried unashamedly. Days of conflict and confusion had come to a head inside of her, and now the dam had burst. She felt miserable and powerless. Since they had found her, tending the wounded guard, she had spent all but a few hours confined within Anaise’s quarters. She was not a prisoner, Anaise had explained, yet neither was Bea any longer free to go as and where she chose. If not guilty of the crime, then she had at the very least been tainted by it. Anaise had made it very clear how she had intervened in person to spare Bea from Konstantin’s rage. Now Anaise was her protector, and, to all intents, her custodian, too.

After what seemed to her like an age, Bea lifted her face and looked around. They were sitting facing the ring of stones that lined the ancient well—the Well of Sadness, Anaise had called it. The name seemed particularly appropriate to Bea now.

Even through the numbing grief, she could feel the energy radiating from the well, like the heat from a great fire. She shuddered. She was not ready for this yet.

“Why have we come here?” she asked.

Anaise ran her hand through Bea’s hair, brushing the strands back from her tear-streaked face. “There is nowhere safer than here,” she whispered, soothingly. “This is the one place Konstantin will dare not come. This is my place alone.”

“Konstantin is searching for me?”

“He does not understand you,” Anaise said. “He doesn’t understand us.”

Bea uttered a cry, a nervous, fearful half-laugh. “I don’t think I understand, either,” she said. “I don’t understand what’s happening. And I don’t understand why you are choosing to protect me.”

Anaise plaited Bea’s hair between her fingers. “Because I do understand you,” she said at length. “You were confused. Your loyalties were torn. You felt you owed a debt to Stefan and Bruno, that’s why you helped them. But you also wanted to do the right thing. That’s why you stayed to tend to the wounded guard.” She smiled, and drew back. “It’s all right. I understand.”

Bea shook her head, uncertainly. Everything made sense, and yet no sense. She thought hard about what she needed to say. “Stefan and Bruno are good men,” she declared. “I know that their souls are pure.”

“But why did they kill a man, and grievously wound another?” Anaise asked, gently. “Can you explain that?”

Bea shrugged. The tears started to well up inside her again. She did not know, yet she sensed that something was wrong, something that she could not yet explain. It was there in the fabric of Sigmarsgeist itself, the unceasing, barely controlled growth of the citadel each day. And it was there in the energy that swelled, like restless waves upon a sea all around her. But the explanation was still beyond her reach.

“They are good men,” was all she could say.

“You say that, but—” Anaise paused, and inclined her head, looking deeper into Bea’s eyes.

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